Trailers are an under-appreciated art form insofar that many times they’re seen as vehicles for showing footage, explaining films away, or showing their hand about what moviegoers can expect. Foreign, domestic, independent, big budget: What better way to hone your skills as a thoughtful moviegoer than by deconstructing these little pieces of advertising? This week we see what Clown from Slipknot does with his time off when he’s not in a jumpsuit, travel overseas for a sci-fi mystery, get schooled on what our drone program is up to, sell some weed with our older brother, and see what happens when YouTube decides to become sentient to make a movie with its in-house talent.Read More »

We’ve spent a lot of the past few weeks looking forward to the cinematic bounty that awaits us in 2016, from The Nice Guys to Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. But for those seeking slightly more exotic fare, we’ve got the first trailer for Évolution.

Directed by Lucile Hadzihalilovic (Innocence), Évolution unfolds on a mysterious island populated only by women and boys. There are some weird details — like those endless medical experiments — but it all seems normal enough to the kids until one boy, Nicholas (Max Brebant) starts to dig deeper. Watch the Evolution trailer after the jump.

(This review is based upon a viewing of the film at Fantastic Fest 2015.)

Evolution is a deep swim in mysterious seas. This tale blends folklore and science fiction into a powerful hallucination of life where land and sea blur together, in which bodies are induced to behave in ways that are new and, in a Lovecraftian sense, possibly even obscene.

Director Lucile Hadzihalilovic, who previously directed Innocence and is a creative partner to spouse Gaspar Noe, keeps the final details of this story shrouded in shadow. She draws on the mysteries of the sea and the pains of growing up to synthesize her own powerful new fable. Read More »